ego

A few years back, I found myself rooting through cupboards in a familiar, desperate search for chocolate. Fortunately, we didn’t have any and this threw me back upon the suffering I was experiencing and gave me the opportunity to wonder what was driving this. For the first time in my life, I experienced a terrifyingly bottomless well of yearning without a story attached to it. The absolute rawness of this emotion was so consuming that I dropped right back into unconsciousness only to awaken a moment later as I was about to tear into some unsweetened baking chocolate. I was that desperate to not feel this.

Among spiritual seekers, there’s an idea that many see as a good reason for not using the Enneagram in their practice. That is that we each have a “story,” or narrative, that continuously tells us who we are, what the world is and how we should be in it. The Enneagram of personality is often seen as adding to this story, giving us more content to support our opinions, pre-conceived notions and limiting beliefs about ourselves and others. However, the Enneagram gives us a wealth of insight and without it, an awful lot of our egoic behavior would potentially remain invisible because it is the nature of Ego to be hidden so it can masquerade as our true nature.

Many spiritual teachers say there are two paths to awakening: the spontaneous awakening and the awakening that happens as a result of intense suffering. They also say that while the path of suffering isn’t necessary, that’s the one most people end up taking.

When you look at Ego, it sure seems to be responsible for all the negative stuff in the world. From that personality conflict with such-and-such that drives us to distraction, to genocide and the threat of nuclear war, if you

I learned a term from a friend the other day: catalytic cycle (props, Alisha!). In chemistry, it applies to a process where a catalyst launches a reaction, then the product interacts with the catalyst, which in turn launches a new